


Lose These Blues I've Found

by handyhunter



Category: Fantastic Four (Movieverse), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-14
Updated: 2010-09-14
Packaged: 2017-10-11 20:09:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handyhunter/pseuds/handyhunter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A chance meeting at a clothing store leads to an unlikely friendship between Hank and Ben.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lose These Blues I've Found

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tartanshell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tartanshell/gifts).



There were few disadvantages to living in Westchester, but one of them was that his tailor lived in DC and could not be persuaded to travel and it was far too early in the semester for Hank to take a vacation in order to have new suits made or altered to fit his frame. His favourite suits had been reduced to ribbons during a minor skirmish on the front lawn the day he moved back into the mansion; Hank chose not to assign any greater importance to it other than a reminder of what life was like as an X-Man, to which, for all intents and purposes, he had returned. He thought about what Scott would say if he attempted to commandeer the jet for a long weekend...but that was neither here nor there now, and, on this lovely Saturday morning, Hank did not want to dwell on his lost friends or his part in the ongoing struggle for mutant rights.

With a light step and slightly heavier conscience, Hank prepared to do some damage to his wallet in the hopes that retail therapy might offer him a brief distraction from his thoughts. He had his hat in one hand and keys in the other when Jubilee came flying down the stairs and skidded to a stop in front of him.

"Hi, Dr. McCoy. Logan said you were going shopping. Can I come too?" she said breathlessly.

"You have excellent timing, my dear." Hank settled his hat between his ears and held the door open for Jubilee. If shopping didn't distract him, she certainly would. Indeed, she was ever the chatterbox, filling him in on much of the gossip around the school. He'd have to remember to verify some of the more outrageous stories with Ororo, though, truthfully, Hank was less scandalized than he led Jubilee to believe. He didn't think it would be wise to encourage such hair-raising behavior, even if some of her antics reminded him of his own teenage years...and, well, it was no wonder the Professor claimed the stress of watching over a house full of young mutants had made him prematurely bald.

Once inside a nearby clothing store - the sign in the window proclaimed it contained clothing for large and tall men - Jubilee made a beeline for the shirts and pulled out the brightest ones she could find for Hank to try.

"What size are you?" She held up a luridly patterned shirt that hurt Hank to look at. "Orange goes well with blue, don't you think?"

Hank took the shirt from her and gently shoved it back under the pile of shirts, mentally apologizing to the store's employees (not that he thought they were telepathic, but you never knew). "Why don't we stick to the darker colours? Something a little less...loud."

"But that's so boring!"

Hank vetoed several more of Jubilee's choices and suggested she might have a better time in the store across the way to look for her own clothing.

"Oh, no, I don't need more clothes," she said. "I like shopping for other people!"

That explained Logan's new scarf and matching mittens. Hank coughed discreetly. "Jubilee, we seem to have irreconcilable fashion styles." He was not above resorting to bribery to encourage Jubilee to focus her attentions elsewhere - perhaps to the ice cream shop near the food court, if she had a full closet - but the sight of several customers and two sales clerks staring openly at him arrested his speech. He'd been on the receiving end of curious glances and hostile glares since his secondary mutation made it impossible for him to pass as baseline human, and it was always unsettling. What was strange about this was that he'd been browsing though the clothing racks for some time now and was hardly attempting to hide. If they wanted to look, surely they'd have done so already? And if they were not staring at him... Hank turned around.

"Ohmygodit'sJohnnyStorm." Jubilee was so excited she was almost setting off sparks.

Johnny Storm, media darling and ladies' man, stood outside the big windows, attracting all kinds of attention and looking extremely pleased with himself about it. Jubilee raced outside to meet this so-called heartthrob, and Hank took the opportunity to try on some new - and understated - dress shirts. He trusted she'd come back to her senses soon enough and, even with the excitement of meeting a celebrity, would not do anything to jeopardize her person.

"This'll go straight to his head, like it isn't big enough already," muttered Ben Grimm, who'd snuck inside the store while Johnny posed for the cameras.

"You could do worse for a PR stunt," said Hank in return. He thought not for the first time that the X-Men had a tendency to take themselves too seriously, and Scott, for all his fearless leadership, had not been comfortable in the public eye.

"Ben Grimm," said Ben pointing to himself, "but you already knew that."

"Hank McCoy." Hank held out his hand (paw, really) for the other man to shake. His grip was surprisingly light and the rocky texture was much smoother than the pads on Hank's palm and fingers.

"I think I've seen you on TV." Ben's expression gave nothing away.

"Hmm." Mutants on television meant mayhem and terror, not victory over extraterrestrial beings or criminals of the human variety, and Hank was not inclined to talk about that today.

Ben was talking about something else anyhow. "Damn kid burnt a hole through my favourite jacket, so I'm making him buy me another one, and a new pair of shoes if I promised not to tell Sue. Trouble is..."

"There aren't ever any sizes or only for their ugliest pair?" Hank glanced down at his own feet, which were tucked inside a very large pair of sneakers. He'd much prefer to be barefoot, but many establishments frowned upon that sort of thing.

"Huh. Yeah. I mean, look at these." Ben held up a pair of leather shoes that would've been respectable enough had some designer not decided to use big, ugly stitches that went around the toe. "These deserve to be set on fire."

Hank left Ben sorting through the least hideous of the footwear and went to the changing room to try on his shirts. He didn't bother doing up the buttons, only checking to see if it fit and that the colour complimented his own dark blue tones; luckily, many colours did. Jubilee was right about orange going well with blue, but Hank could not imagine any occasion for which he'd wear something fluorescent and he left that shirt in the changing room.

*

The next time he bumped into Ben, he was in his X-Men outfit and they were trying to bring down a troubled and troublesome dinosaur on the streets on Manhattan without getting in the way of each other's respective teams. As impromptu team-ups went, this one wasn't a total disaster. They did manage to subdue the dinosaur and arrange to have it shipped back to the Savage Land, as well as arrest the person responsible for bringing it to the city, but the collateral damage was rather excessive, what with the broken fire hydrants, overturned taxi cabs and an outraged Wolverine chasing after Johnny Storm, after the latter (accidentally! he swore) singed the former's hair.

After rounding up Logan, Ororo piloted the Blackbird away from the scene as reporters flocked around the Fantastic Four.

"We tried to give the X-Men equal credit," said Ben, voice crackling slightly over the speaker phone in Hank's lab.

Hank jotted down a few notes on Jubilee's proposal for a science experiment, cautioning against the use of hair spray as it was flammable. "Oh, certainly. The X-Men received heaps of 'credit' for destroying a city block and the Fantastic Four were credited with stopping the Apatosaurus and his careless wrangler."

"You can hardly blame the media's failings on me."

"Of course not," said Hank, generously. "But the reason I called... Might you know a woman named Abigail Brand?She's a special agent of Sentient World-- It's easier to call them SWORD. The government and their acronyms, honestly."

"Green hair, green eyes, prone to rudeness?"

"The one and only," confirmed Hank.

"She had a run in with Reed a week ago. One of his satellites was blocking the view of her space station. Operative word being _was_. She threatened to take over its use if he didn't move it immediately, which Reed didn't appreciate, being stretched thin over his latest pet project and you know how he gets." Hank didn't know Richards very well, but could easily imagine a scientist having a one-track mind -- it was an occupational hazard with which Hank was familiar. Ben sounded amused either by Brand or his own pun. "Why are you asking anyway?"

"I can't tell you. It's classified."

"Oh, come on. That's not fair," rumbled Ben. "If it's extraterrestrial, we might be able to help."

"Very well." Hank paused, then said in a conspiratorial whisper, "There's been a great disturbance in the force."

Ben hung up on him.

Hank turned off his phone, filed his grade book away and contemplated the universe and a green eyed woman of recent acquaintance. He had told Ben the truth. Brand wanted to poke around the school and its surrounding areas because she'd noticed a peculiar spike in the energy levels. Whether or not it was a threat to human-kind, mutant-kind or any and all, she had yet to determine. It was possible it was nothing, but Hank had been an X-Man too long to hope on that.

*

A few weeks later, in the same clothing store, Hank contemplated the rack of dress shirts and his own misfortune with losing or damaging them beyond repair. He heard Ben call out his name.

"Hot date?" asked Ben casually. He had a shoe box tucked under his arm, so Hank surmised he must have finally found a pair to his liking.

Hank's whiskers twitched. "Emma Frost is holding her annual fundraiser for her school, and it is strictly a formal affair. I seem to lose or destroy more articles of clothing at the school than I did in government work. That seems wrong for some reason."

"I didn't think Emma Frost was your type," said Ben.

"Nor I hers," said Hank, wondering what type Ben thought he should like. "We're good friends." They'd remained so, even after Emma left Xavier's school to start her own.

If Hank had a type, these days, it ran towards a sharp, contrary woman who'd propositioned him in a manner that made him heat up to recall it. He was glad his blue fur couldn't blush. After Abigail Brand made known her interest in him in no uncertain terms, Hank had taken to avoiding her, but he couldn't avoid her forever. And he was pretty sure he didn't want to.

"Did you-- Would you, if you could, transform yourself back to your original state?" he asked Ben, who looked surprised and then nodded. It was an expression of understanding, not an answer to Hank's sudden, intrusive question.

They were in the middle of aisle six, surrounded by other shoppers. It was probably the least auspicious place they could have had this conversation, but aside from a few looks in their direction, people were leaving them alone.

"When this first happened-" Ben spread out his arms "- I would have changed back in a heartbeat."

"And now?" Hank had grown resigned and accustomed to his new body as it became evident this was to be his permanent state. He even depended upon this greater physical strength and agility at times, but... He shed blue hair everywhere, no matter how well groomed he kept himself, and snazzy clothes didn't hide the fact that he resembled a very large cat - and a blue one at that - more than he did a man.

Ben let his arms drop. "Once in a while, I think about it. But, the Fantastic Three doesn't have the same ring to it, does it? Hey, don't tell Johnny I said this, okay? He worries too much about me as it is."

Johnny Storm did not look like he had a care in the world, as he chatted with Kitty and Jubilee, whose ability to hone in on Hank's shopping schedule was really quite uncanny -- if he didn't know better, he might have thought she were telepathic, of the selective sort, who only wanted to know when one might be going to the mall. It dawned on Hank that Johnny had no reason to shop for clothing in a big-and-tall store, and he allowed for the possibility that Johnny was here to keep Ben company, or to look out for him, under the pretext of mugging for the cameras or basking in the adoration of two impressionable teenage girls. Not, Hank concluded, that he couldn't do all these things at the same time.

"Did you ever think about taking the cure?" Ben asked, as softly as his deep voice would allow.

All of the hair on the back of Hank's neck bristled, even though he expected the question. Of course he'd thought about it, but he said, a trifle shortly, "Mutation is not something that needs to be cured." He could hear echoes of Ororo in his mind, and he thought of the vials he had secreted away in his lab. Looking at the cure, looking for a cure for the cure. Looking for a cure that only cured the blue fur.

Ben looked a little hurt by that, and Hank was sorry for it, but how could he explain his thoughts on the cure when they were still so mixed up in his own mind? Added to that were the splintered and polarized feelings of the mutant community, such as it was, and Hank could not find a way to voice his uneasy opinions on the subject. He had no desire to tell other people, mutants and baseline humans alike, how to live their lives, nor any desire to be told how to live his, but given the current state of general hostility towards mutants, he feared any public show of...uncertainty, never mind support for the cure, would somehow be used against the mutant community as a whole, even those who had taken the cure - or were subject to it by force - or still wished to do so.

"Ever the politician, hmm?"

Hank shrugged. "Who me? I'm a scientist."

Their conversation drifted onto more mundane topics after that. Hank settled on a few shirts he liked and the two men paid for their purchases and rounded up their shopping companions.

*

In the car, Jubilee fiddled with the radio controls until she found a station she liked. Hank couldn't make heads or tails of the lyrics with Jubilee talking over them. "Ms. Munro is taking Logan to Ms. Frost's dinner thing. Are you going?"

Hank answered in the affirmative.

"Are you bringing a date?"

"I... I'm not sure," he said.

Jubilee and Kitty exchanged significant looks.

"You should give her flowers," said Kitty. "What's her favourite colour?"

"I believe she's partial to green, but I haven't asked her yet." There was a good chance Abigail Brand would not be available or that she'd changed her mind. "It wouldn't be a real date," Hank said more to himself than the girls. "It's...more of a business meeting." Brand had left him a recent message about wanting to discuss her findings on the strange energy readings; he could invite her to Emma's party to talk.

"Yeah, that's what Ms. Munro said too." Jubilee frowned at him when he was not forthcoming with any information on her teachers' personal lives.

"And what did Logan say?" asked Hank.

"I haven't asked him yet." Jubilee looked at him suspiciously. "Why? Do you know something I don't?"

"How could I possibly?"

Hank's non-denial resulted in Jubilee and Kitty giving him the third degree about Logan's personal life, when as far as Hank knew, Logan didn't have one, at least not around the kids. No one ever knew what he did when he took off on his own. Hank was glad for the redirection of Jubilee and Kitty's attention. He might have an angry Wolverine to deal with later, but that was preferable to the girls discussing his own love life (or lack thereof, to be more accurate).

Once in the security of his own lab, and away from the curious ears of matchmaking teenagers, Hank dialled Agent Brand's personal line.

"Hank," she said by way of greeting. "You have half a minute to tell me why you're calling. We're in the middle of a crisis up here."

The hell with it. Hank threw caution to the wind and said, "This is extremely short notice, so I will understand if you say no - I mean, you can say no for other reasons too, not that you need me to tell you that - and, well, the thing is, there's a benefit tonight - dinner, dancing, drinking...that type of thing - and would you like to go with me?" Hank winced at his ramble. Next time, he'd throw caution aside after he worked out what he would say, especially since Brand didn't answer right away and he had a sinking feeling he'd said the wrong thing.

"I tell you I want to have sex with you and you ask me out on a date?" she finally said, sounding amused and a tiny bit distracted.

"We can do that after?" Hank ventured, trying to remember how to flirt; possibly, Brand was much too direct to flirt. But she laughed and asked for the time and directions and told him she'd meet him there. She hung up on him after that to deal with her alien crisis.

"Well," said Hank to himself and his microscopes. He woolgathered for a moment, then made another phone call to Ben Grimm, to apologize and explain. He had lost more than enough friends that he didn't want to lose another one if he could help it. Ben wasn't a replacement for Scott and Jean, both of whom Hank had known since childhood when friendship was an easier thing for him, with their relationships strengthening over time, close quarters and shared experiences. Getting to know new people - and letting them into his life - was a challenge and he resolved to invest more effort into his new relationships and seeing where they lead.


End file.
